"Although some players disagreed with Curt Schilling's closing, that was the team's only alternative without Keith Foulke. If Schilling works, and once they've added Chad Bradford, they won't need to trade prospects for the likes of David Weathers or Ricky Bottalico or even Eddie Guardado. They could eventually move Jon Papelbon and Manny Delcarmen (and perhaps Craig Hansen) into the alignment in front of Schilling and Mike Timlin. "We're simply not trading certain prospects, period," says Epstein. "Eventually what we want to build is an organization where we have a couple of players coming to the big leagues every year, players who have come through our system as teammates, who are Red Sox. There's a culture that has to be developed to make that work and make the organization healthy and vibrant for a long period of time, and I'm not going to alter and make a dumb move."

"Keith Foulke now admits that he refused to have his knee scoped at the beginning of spring training. And still gets paid in full, despite what it did to the Red Sox."
-- 7.12 ESPN's Peter Gammons Insider Column (Now subscription only)